Visited Espoo Modern Museum of Art

My home town finally got its act together and opened a hefty modern art museum in Tapiola, a few kilometers from downtown Helsinki. The museum complex has been renovated into an old book printing house WeeGee, and it gives shelter for five different museums: EMMA (Espoo Modern Museum of Art), Helinä Rautavaara museum, clock museum, toy museum and the city museum of Espoo.

WeeGee is the biggest museum in Finland nowadays, and EMMA is the biggest museum in the house, taking almost all space on the second floor. There is an excellent permanent exhibition, mainly from Finnish modernists from 1910 to the present. The international collection is still small, but museum is actively purchasing new works of art to grow the collection.

The inaugural exhibitions featured Kazimir Malevitch, Knave of Diamonds group from early 20th century Russia, Iranian photographer and videa artist Shirin Neshat and Finnish photographer Timo Kelaranta. I was mostly impressed by the works of Malevitch and the Knave of Diamonds group. Photograph motifs are usually either too abstract or then too disgusting for my taste. Video art is not my cup of tea — albeit some rare works have been able to move something inside me.

We were planning of touring all museums, but Aapo got bored and we had to stop after EMMA and have something to eat in the café on downstairs. The toy museum would have been a catastrophe, so we left it to the later times.